exp hard cap is where its at. I even use a deepz weap and trinket for all the ham.

Thank you for genuinely making me laugh when I woke up this morning, also /brofist

Yes, exactly what idefiler6 posted with regards to gearing

One thing I would note is that I wouldn't really ever go slightly under any of the caps, the reasoning behind this is that the whole reason you get the caps in the first place is to smooth out burst by having more rage, which is highly negated if for whatever reason you get a parry or miss at the exact time you need it most to pop that barrier or block; your entire gearing strategy has just been blown out of the water:P

Thank you for genuinely making me laugh when I woke up this morning, also /brofist

Yes, exactly what idefiler6 posted with regards to gearing

One thing I would note is that I wouldn't really ever go slightly under any of the caps, the reasoning behind this is that the whole reason you get the caps in the first place is to smooth out burst by having more rage, which is highly negated if for whatever reason you get a parry or miss at the exact time you need it most to pop that barrier or block; your entire gearing strategy has just been blown out of the water:P

Yeah that's also what I'm doing. If I should have 7,4% hit I'd reforge/gem over it for exactly those reasons.
Right now I'm at 7,54% hit and 15,03% expertise, so very close to the ideal amount.

Theoretical question: If I'd replace my Ji-Kun's trinket with Fortitude of the Zandalari = -4.31% expertise. A lot.
- Would I be allowed to reforge the mastery on Fortitude away to expertise? Guess I should get around 1-2% back then.
- Then I still need about 2% for hardcap. I raid 10 man, so I normally gem hit/mastery in blues. Should I then switch to Exp/Stamina 'till hardcap
or
- Gem 320 expertise? My pally tank does this for his hardcap, but other class other gems.

I don't have a Fortitude trinket right now, but I'm not sure if I'm happy with Ji-Kun's one. Sounds strange I know.
Can't even say if the healing proc really saved my life some times.. During Council this week it procced three times. At Megaera also at least three times, always noncrit.

Advice is much appreciated, perhaps someone got the same concerns as I.

For a red socket I honestly wouldn't waste the stamina you can pick up from it so I would suggest using Exp / Stam in it
You could do that but I honestly would get ReforgeLite as there might be better options than losing that mastery, given it is our 3rd strongest secondary stat after Exp / Hit, as this is basically wowreforge ingame and lets you get the most possibly out of your reforges

Tbh trinkets sometimes are a mixed bag, if you will pardon the expression, if it doesn't suit how you like playing or how your healers like healing then you should swap it to the fortitude one which should be stronger anyway
The Ji-kun trinket will be stronger in 10 than 25 but like I say, it should be your raid's preference as to what you go for unless one is clearly superior to the other

One thing I would note is that I wouldn't really ever go slightly under any of the caps, the reasoning behind this is that the whole reason you get the caps in the first place is to smooth out burst by having more rage, which is highly negated if for whatever reason you get a parry or miss at the exact time you need it most to pop that barrier or block; your entire gearing strategy has just been blown out of the water:P

I disagree. When you gem/reforge to go over the cap the value of that reforge is drastically reduced. Starting from a value per stat point of view, lets go over a quick example (fake numbers):

1 point of Exp is worth 2 points to you
1 point of Mastery is worth 1 point to you
(you're valuing Exp as being twice as good at Mastery)

You need only 1 more point of exp in order to hit your cap, but your reforge Mastery -> Exp will give you 10 points. If you do this reforge
Mastery decreases by 10 points: -10
Exp increases by 1 useful point: +2
The reforge is actually a net loss of 8 stat points.

As a dps, you could have the arguement that your rotation is completely ruined if you miss that one application of your debuff, so you need to go over the cap.
But as a prot warrior, I don't think the tiny chance of missing out on a bit of rage generation is that vital, rage is coming in all the time.

I'm not saying don't go over the cap. I'm just saying, don't force yourself over the cap at any cost.

Just to be clear, this all goes for normals as well, right? The whole 15% Expertise thing? I'm asking because for some people, talk of 10 and 25-man raids are followed by HC as default.

I'm also a bit concerned about when I should start following this 15% Expertise > Stamina > Mastery thing. Is there a certain item level where I should follow this strictly? I can't imagine it being very useful at say, below 495 due to the lack of Stamina and Mastery in general and because of how much of the the aforementioned stats I'd be sacrificing to reach anything close to 15% Expertise.

I get that this Expertise thing should also significantly increase a Prot Warrior's DPS, but I'm raiding HoF (to get people the pieces they're missing) + ToT normals and to an extent, MSV heroics as well - all 10-man. Is the extra DPS (and the obvious Rage increase) from my Warrior enough to make up for the lack of mitigation at this level?

And what about healers? Due to the lack of mitigation, they'd be in trouble if they're not 500++ ilvl and can handle most of the T15 content.

I never said force yourself over the cap by any means, I'm just saying be over instead of under

For 10, I would say your point holds a little more validity although I still disagree about it not being vital. It does occasionally happen that you cannot cast block due to not having enough rage, and that next shield slam being vital to you surviving. If you die and you have used your combat resses that will probably result in a wipe and 10 minutes lost which in progress especially when you don't raid that much IS a big deal so just for the sake of consistency you should be getting yourself to the cap
You simply can't rely on it being a very low chance to happen